This morning I went outside to pick some baby lettuces for a salad for lunch. I brought them tenderly inside and laid them on the scale to see just how hefty my lettuces might be. Let's just say, it was rather humbling. Where "humble" = 12 grams.
Don't think that's too bad? Every gram counts, do you say? Well, let me put it in perspective. It would take just over 5,000 such lettuce harvests to reach my goal. Yea, i know. 5,000. Luckily there are heavier plants growing on my balcony, too...
Just to keep you all updated, that brings me to a total of 479 grams (just over a pound) for a whopping .78% of my goal! Humph. That's not a lot. In fact, at this point, I probably could have lost a pound and come out ahead! Sigh. My growing so far has also really been mostly sprouts. So, doing the math... hmm, I'd need to grow 405 grams (just over a pound) per day for 5 months to make my goal. I do have all year to grow my weight in food, but May, June, July, August, and September are really the growing season for New England, and the months where I can grow the big, heavy things!
By my calculations, I am currently averaging 10-15 grams per day... so basically, I need a 40x increase. Now, that IS a lot. Humph.
And you know what else was humbling!? I went outside later on in the day to check on one of my self-watering containers in which I planted some lettuces, a Tiny Tim tomato, bush peas, snap peas, carrots, etc... and you know what? Something (a bird, I'm guessing, probably looking for worms) just clipped off a bunch of peas, cut off my tomato plant from it's stem, trampled a few seedlings, and left the tops for dead. They didn't even eat the tiny plants they snipped! It was pretty tragic. I was feeling a tad discouraged cause I was really rather proud of this tomato going in so early. And now I have a new issue... the birds (at least i assume they're birds and hopefully not "caterpillars from hell" as James jokingly suggested) have found my seedlings. Not sure what to do about this yet.
Ok! I now have lots of motivation to get going on more planting, especially with all the great cool weather crops for spring planting. Let's get those carrots, radishes, snap peas, bush peas, edible flowers, lettuces, arugula, spinach, and bundle onions going!!! Did you know certain radishes can be harvested in 23-25 days after planting? And they come in all shapes and sizes (see picture). But what do you do with a radish? We now have 25 days to find out! I think we might plan for a radish a day at this point...
In yet another desperate and creative attempt at more plants, we turned to the indoor windows. One idea is vertical space. James helped lace up one of our windows with twine so, if we are lucky, we'll have a snap pea, bean, and nasturtium (edible flowers and leaves) curtain! It'll be a great way to keep the kitchen shaded in the summer, and provide some tasty edibles, too.
The saga continues...
0 comments:
Post a Comment